Jesus Christ is risn'n today, da da da da da, da da da, da, da

Just in from Easter morning Mass at St. Stephen Martyr, my little neighborhood R.C. parish. As expected, it was jam packed in the pews and there were probably over a hundred people standing in the side aisles and in the narthex in back. You would think that these Catholics would know after all these years that if they show up at 10:59 for an 11 a.m. Easter Mass, they're just not going to get a seat!

Finally found a church with Easter lilies! You can see the handful they had at the altar; there were also about a dozen of them grouped under the ambo (pulpit).

I shall be exceedingly holy for the next year, as I got a face full of holy water as monsignor walked down the aisle with the aspergillum "sprinkling" the congregation and hitting me straight on. Good thing he's not my Father Confessor or he'd have dumped the whole bucket on me.

They rented an electronic organ for the Triduum and the Easter season, which was a much welcome addition! (This is the place with the broken pipe organ that's trying to raise a million dollars to install a new symphonic Spanish pipe organ) They also had a small string orchestra with French horns to help out with some of the music. The strings played a bit of a prelude after the choral Lauds that preceded the service.

They did a sort of oddly juxaposed Gloria with the Gloria from Mass in B Minor by J. S. Bach (choir and orchestra) and the Gloria from the Hurd New Plainsong Mass. Other Mass setting music included the Hughes Mass of the Divine Word during the consecration and the old Gregorian Agnus Dei.

Hymns were Easter Hymn for the processional, Festival Canticle during the offertory, and Hymn to Joy for the recessional. The parish's organist-choirmaster Christopher Candela wrote an antiphonal hymn "Those Who East Your Flesh" which they sang as communion music and he also wrote the Gospel Acclamation setting. They used the Proulx antiphon for the responsorial psalm.

Anthems included a Gregorian Mode 1 "Christians praise the pascal victim" as a sequence, a plainsong "I Saw Water Flowing" during the asperges, "Surgens Jesus" by Peter Phillips (1561–1628) at the offertory, and the Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah during the ablutions.

The orchestra did Allegro from Concerto IV by Johann Melchior Molter (1696—1765) for a postlude.

Fun morning, and it was beautiful and sunny this morning, though it looks a bit overcast now. Leo is waiting on me so we can go shopping and then to Easter brunch somewhere, so I must away. Happy Easter!

Easter greetings

Happy Easter, everybody!

The Great Vigil at K Street

Kindling the New Fire

The Great Vigil of Easter, Rite I
St. Paul's Episcopal Church (K Street)—Washington, D.C.
April 15, 2006

First Lesson: Genesis 1:1—2:2
Psalm 33:8—11, Anglican chant by Edwin G. Monk

Second Lesson: Genesis 22:1—18
Psalm 33:13—14, 20—21, Anglican chant by Edward Elgar

Third Lesson: Exodus 14:10—15:1
Canticle: Cantemus Domino, Tone VIII, with verses in falsobordone by Francis Burgess

Fourth Lesson: Isaiah 55:1—11
Psalm 43:2—3, 6—7, Anglican chant by H. Walford Davies

Fifth Lesson: Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 30:1, 3, 12—13, Anglican chant by Michael Nicholas

Anthem: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Sicut cervus

Antiphon: Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, Mode VII

Mass setting: Healey Willan, Missa de Sancta Maria Magdalena

Psalm 114, Tonus Peregrinus, sung congregationally

Easter Acclamations: Joseph Noyon, arr. Gerre Hancock

Offertory Motet: attrib. Josquin Desprèz, Regina coeli
Offertory Hymn: Unser Herrscher

Communion Motet: Andrea Gabrieli, Maria Magdalena et altera Maria
Ablutions Hymn: Ellacombe

Recessional Hymn: St. Albinus

Voluntary: William Boyce, arr. Chuck Seipp, Trumpet Voluntary in B-flat

---

Wow, we just made it through the Easter Vigil at St. Paul's K Street. It was just six minutes shy of three hours!

The church was packed! How many Vigils have I sung in the past where there were more people in the altar party and choir than in the congregation? I showed up half an hour before the service thinking I'd be able to snap a few photos and stake out a good place to sit so I could both see the choir and be accessible for my friend John who was driving down from Baltimore as soon as he finished playing services at his parish up there, but when I walked into the church, the nave was already full and practically all of the seats were either occupied or being reserved. Ultimately, they would have to set up several rows of folding chairs in the narthex.

When the service started at 9 p.m., the first thing they did was kindle the New Fire of Easter. Now, most churches do this by using a cigarette lighter to light a candle lighter with which to light the Pascal Candle; not so at St. Paul's! They used a sparker and kindled a bonfire back in the narthex! That's a picture of it up at the top of this post. Once the flames died down a little bit, they used coals from the fire to light the charcoal in the incense thurible and then lit candles from the flames of the bonfire.

The new curate served as deacon and chanted the Exultet and the Gospel. It occurred to me that they don't seem to teach chanting to divinity students at Yale.

The whole first hour and a half of the service (the lessons and the baptisms) was done essentially in darkness. The congregation had candles to use during parts of the service, but we sat for the lessons, psalms, and collects in darkness. Finally, at the Gloria, they turned the lights on!

Speaking of the Gloria, they had parishioners bring bells to ring during the Gloria. It was weird.

Oh, during the lessons, I was absolutely appalled when one of the readers went up to the lectern wearing this great big, round, straw, daytime hat! I couldn't tell with the candlelight, but I sure hope she wasn't also wearing white before Memorial Day! Shockingly, I also saw two other women in the congregation in day hats, though theirs were more of the modified pork pie shape.

In addition to the full-form Exultet, they also chanted a lengthy Litany of Saints during the baptismal procession to the font in the narthex.

The Noyon Easter Acclamations were a trip! There's this loud congregational chorus that actually has a lot of high Fs and even a big high G! Gs were not in my contract tonight, especially with no warning and no warm-up.

Once we got to the Mass, the organ was joined by a brass quartet and tympanist.

The choir had a ton of music to sing tonight. I thought they particularly shined on the Anglican chants during the Lessons portion of the service. The Palestrina was particularly nice. The Desprèz during the offertory started out fine, but it had a few internal rough notes and then by the ending cadences they lost tuning and I was involuntarily turning my hand in my conductor's "tuning knob motion" trying to help them out (now, mind you, this is a very professional choir, so all "problems" are relative and I'm very very perfectionistic).

Once again the church looked like they'd had a professional floral designer in to do the arrangements. Interestingly enough, though, I didn't see a single Easter lily in the entire building! You can see the altar, above. Here are some pictures of some of the arrangements on the tops of the columns in the nave and one of some green callas by the pulpit.



I should have gotten a picture of the baptistery in the back of the narthex, but the priests were standing there greeting people after the marathon, uh, er, I mean service. It was decorated in branches of flowering trees such as cherry and dogwood. The chapel was done in greenery and bare branches:



After the service, John and I went up to the dining room in the parish hall for the post-Vigil reception. As usual, no one talked to us. The place was interestingly decorated with pastel crepe paper streamers everywhere and columns of lighted streamers over each of the three food buffet tables which were laden with cheeses (mostly big wheels of brie), rollups, meatballs, deviled eggs, shrimp (enough to repopulate the Gulf of Mexico), crudités, dips (we found some freshly made guacamole so they must have given the servants carte blanche to cook), cookies, miniature cream puffs and probably other things we missed. And, as is traditional with most Episcopal churches, there was a big wine table with sparkling cider and Freixenet Spanish cava sparkling wine (they kept shooting corks all over the dining room!). We didn't stay long, or even get drunk for a change, since John had to drive back to Baltimore and get ready to play all the services in the morning. He'll certainly get a workout: he's doing the Gigout "Grand Choeur Dialogue" (which I love!) with brass for his postludes tomorrow!

Hope everyone has a happy Easter!

Happy Passover

Happy Passover!

Today is the first day of Passover (seasonal felicitations to any of you Jewish readers!), which means the observance started last night at sundown. My friend Eugene has some Russian Jewish ancestors, so we decided it would be fun to have a meal with traditional Passover foods, but we didn't want to do a formal religious Seder meal (the original "Lord's Supper," for you Christian readers). Several of the nicer restaurants in town have special Passover menus this year, including Felix in Adams-Morgan, Gallileo in the West End, and Rosa Mexicana in Penn Quarter, but they were booked up with reservations (not to mention pretty expensive!). Nonplussed, we looked for an inexpensive place with roast lamb on the menu.

And, we happened upon Zorba's Cafe, just across from the Q Street exit of the Dupont Circle Metro station. Zorba's is always a fun place for a quick and inexpensive meal. They are a rather casual place where diners go to a counter on the lower level to order, pay, and pick up their own food, then they can select their own table on the main level, upstairs, or out on the patio where we chose to eat. The best thing about Zorba's, though, is the "home cooked" food from old Greek family recipes.

This place has some of the best kotósoupa avgolémono I've tasted. This is a simple chicken, vegetable, and rice soup enriched with eggs and lemon juice—a very classic Greek dish—and theirs is always well balanced, hearty, and delicious. They didn't have any matzo ball soup (matzo is not a traditional Greek food!), but we brought our own box of matzo crackers to eat in lieu of the leavened rolls Zorba's serves.

For our main course we had a sort of "blue plate special," their arnáki sto foúrno. They roast a leg of lamb and pull the tender meat from the bone and allow it to mingle with its own natural juices. They serve it on top of a mound of lightly tomato-sauced Greek pasta called manéstra, which looks like large, oversized grains of rice. Along with the lamb and pasta is a large serving of Greek salad with crumbled feta cheese and black Greek olives. Along with our meal, we split a carafe of Greek red wine, since the Passover tradition is to drink four glasses of wine with dinner!

Tonight starts the Christian Triduum, and I've still not decided where all I'm going to church and when this weekend.

Oh, I'm really curious about the "Mexican Passover" food at Rosa Mexicana, so if anybody is feeling bold and adventuresome and wants to try it out, let me know.

Requiem music

Had a very interesting conversation with a Texas friend tonight, and we were talking about the funeral services we had written several years ago (we were both probate attorneys, so this sort of thing is routine as we were trying to set an example for our elderly estate planning clients). He pointed out that I've moved several times since my service was last updated. This is true; I've lived in D.C. for a year and a quarter, and before that I was in Tulsa for three and a half years, and before that....

Anyway, I'm reviewing. The service will be Episcopal 1979 BCP Rite 1. Mass setting will be a congregational-participatory Healey Willan Missa de Sancta Maria Magdalena with soprano descants and sung Our Father. There should be enough incense to obscure the altar. Now, we just have to pick incidental service music. I've come up with some ideas, and I'm looking for outside input.

I. Prelude and postlude

For the prelude, I'm thinking organ transcriptions of Elgar's Variation IX "Nimrod" from Enigma Variations and then Barber's "Adagio" from String Quartet, but I need a third piece to start off the set....perhaps something English or French? I dunno. Suggestions?

For the postlude, I'm thinking Widor's "Toccata" from Symphonie 5 pour Orgue.

Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?

---

II. Service music

Option A: Anglophile

Introit: Thomas Mathews, "Souls of the Righteous"
Sequence: Edgar Bainton, "And I Saw a New Heaven"
Offertory: Ralph Vaughn-Williams, "O How Amiable"
Communion: Herbert Howells, "Like as the Hart Desireth the Waterbrooks"
Committal: John Taverner, "Song for Athene"

Option B: Operatic

Introit: Verdi, "Preghiera di Desdemona" from Otello
Sequence: Bernstein, Movement II ("Adonai roi lo ehsar") from Chichester Psalms
Offertory: Mascagni, "Regina Coeli" from Cavalleria Rusticana
Communion: Wagner, "Pilgrims' Chorus" from Tannhäuser
Committal: Humperdinck, "When at night I go to sleep" and "Pantomime" from Hänsel und Gretel

Option C: Contemporary Christian

Introit: Rick Vale and Sandi Patty, "Doxology"
Sequence: Greg Nelson and Phill McHugh, "People Need the Lord"
Offertory: arr. David Hamilton, "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" from The Young Messiah
Communion: Marie Barnett, "Breathe"
Committal: Greg Nelson and Phill McHugh, "Come to Me"

Option D: Congregational Hymns Only

Processional: Engelberg, All praise to thee, for thou, O King divine
Sequence: Jerusalem, O day of peace that dimly shines
Gradual: St. Columba, The King of love my shepherd is
Offertory: Thaxted, I vow to thee, my country
Communion: Adoro Devote, Jesus, son of Mary, fount of life alone
Committal: Repton, Dear Lord and Father of mankind
Recessional: Litton, Go forth for God

Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?

Jelly beans

Did the hideous guitar Mass at 5:30 at St. Stephen's. They passed out word sheets, but they needed music cause nobody knew the melody for several of the hymns (especially "Christ, Be Our Light" for the processional and "Now We Remain" for the Offeratory (sic)). The other two hymns were known, and, while the congregation barely murmured, some female sitting in the back of the nave was singing loudly and not with the cantoress and the guitar boy. At communion, I do believe that that was the most depressing rendition of "One Bread, One Body" I have ever heard in my life. Recessional hymn was "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," an interesting "canon" with the loud singer woman.

Monsignor preached about Lent, giving up jelly beans or Jim Beam, torturing his nephews with candy, and told the story of Moses and the Great Bronze Serpent. It was Laetare Sunday, so he was in his rose chasuble, which was a good two feet too short.

The Second String

I've been very bad this Lent. Not only have I struggled to maintain my self-imposed Lenten food restrictions but I've missed two Sunday Masses in a row. Then, yesterday I went to Mass at the R.C. parish around the corner and took communion.....my last confession? December. :::gasp!::: Oh, well. Fortunately, I'm not Catholic. We Episcopalians take a much more liberal view of such things. What is it they say about the Episcopal Church? It's Catholic Lite—twice the ceremony and half the guilt.

Since I was awake unconscionably early yesterday morning, I went to the 9 o'clock instead of my usual 11 o'clock at St. Stephen's. It was definitely Second String Sunday (is that a purple day or a red day for a feast of martyrs?). The assistant pastor celebrated, the young Vietnamese deacon I can't understand preached, the substitute organist played, and the substitute cantor sang. The 9 o'clock is always a cantor-only Mass, so it's musically non-adventurous. The mass setting was Mass of the Divine Word by Howard Hughes (no, not Leonardo DiCaprio's version) with the Gregorian Pater Noster and Agnus Dei. Hymns were Leoni for the processional, St. Flavian for the offertory, Aurelia for the recessional, and an odd responsorial version of "You satisfy the hungry heart" (does that hymn have a name?) at communion. The congregation never really sings the communion marching song, but I thought they did pretty well with the other three "old standard" hymns, even with timid accompaniment. The wrong antiphon for the psalm got printed in the service leaflet, so the congregation didn't look up the correct one in the hymnal and they just didn't sing, reinforcing my often-stated opinion that the bad Catholic habit of making all the hymns and service music responsorial with the congregation only singing antiphons/choruses and the cantor/choir singing the verses is just a really bad idea cause the congregation won't sing if they don't have the music and words in front of them. Sometimes it can be so hard being a church musician!

St. Patrick's questions

The Feast of Saint Patrick is just a week away!

I'm thinking about planning a little St. Patrick's Day party for after the National Symphony concert that night, kind of a late night supper with a little Irish whiskey and stuff, all with authentic Irish food, of course.

And then, as I was looking at my calendar, it occured to me that St. Patrick's Day falls on a Friday this year. A Friday in Lent. Eh. That's a problem. What are we supposed to eat? Corned fish and cabbage?

I need some menu idea help, guys! Let's do some brainstorming and come up with a St. Patrick's Day dinner menu that meets the Church's requirements for meatless Fridays in Lent. That means no corned beef, no mutton stew, no boxty with bacon.

So, menu suggestions?

Blee-NEE and caviar

I had a great time just hanging out at Svet's place last night. He cooked dinner for us, too, making these big, thin pancake-thingies and getting out the good Russian caviar—a red caviar, in this case—so we could have blini. Of course, the first thing he made me do was learn to pronounce the word correctly. I've always called them BLEE-nees, but the correct pronunciation isn't plural and puts the accent on the last syllable: blee-NEE. When it was time to eat, he spread a pancake with butter and added a couple of generous spoonfuls of caviar, spreading it around the middle of the pancake. Then he rolled the pancake up into a tube and proceded to eat it. For the second blini, instead of caviar, he used fruit preserves (he seems to be quite partial to black currant). Since this is Масленица (Maslenitsa), the pancake week which is the Russian Orthodox Church's pre-Lenten equivalent to Carnival or Mardi Gras, it was an appropriate and traditional meal.

The Orthodox don't start Lent until Sunday, unlike those of us from liturgical denominations of the Western church. So, while I've already started my Lenten discipline, Svet wasn't the least bit sympathetic, and on the second day of Lent made me break my food rules already! I'm being vegetarian and giving up meat, fish, alcohol, and desserts for Lent, but he insisted that I had to eat some Swiss milk chocolate infused with orange essence, Lent or not. And, the jury's still out on the issue of whether or not eating caviar violated my prohibition on meat; I submit that it did not, however, on the grounds that I'm being an ovolactovegetarian and can eat chicken eggs, which means that caviar (fish eggs) is just another "ovo" food. Fortunately I'm not Orthodox like Svet; according to strict Orthodox tradition, meat, fish, dairy, and eggs are all forbidden during their Great Lent!

Getting ashed

A large standing-room-only crowd packed St. Matthew's Cathedral at noon today for the imposition of ashes and to hear His Eminence Terence Cardinal McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, say Mass as part of the annual Lenten observance for Ash Wednesday. Cathedral rector Msgr. Ronald Jamieson concelebrated with the cardinal.

The congregation was packed into the pews and hundreds of people stood along the walls and in the narthex in back. Some unidentified press was there as well, both with video and still cameras.

I had been in the neighborhood for an interview late this morning and I didn't realize either that the cardinal would be celebrating that Mass or that it would be so crowded, or I might have gone elsewhere. It was a nice service, though, and I think this was probably the finest service from both the liturgical and the musical standpoints that I've seen at St. Matthew's in the past year.

The eighteen-voice Schola Cantorum was in full force, singing in Latin mainly a capella Renaissance works, and sounding very well-rehearsed and professional. They had quite a number of anthems to sing today, too. For the introit, they did the Mode I chant of "Misereris omnium, Domine." During the imposition of ashes on the foreheads of all of the people in the congregation they sang "Inter vestibulum et altare" by Cristobal de Morales and "Emendemus in melius" by William Byrd. The offertory anthem was "Exaltabo te, Domine" by G. P. da Palestrina. For communion they did the Mode III chant of "Qui meditabitur in lege Domini" and a wonderful "Os justi" by Anton Bruckner. The mass setting was David Hurd's New Plainsong Mass. Processional hymn was a psalm with a Richard Proulx antiphon and the recessional hymn was Erhalt uns Herr. There was no organ prelude or postlude.



Comic relief for the Mass was provided by this African lady who came in late and then tried to squeeze into one of the already packed-full pews. The ushers were trying to convince her that she couldn't sit there and had to stand at the back, but she was totally uncooperative and kept trying to climb into the pew (exactly where she was planning to sit I've no idea). Eventually, a man got up and gave her his seat, so she moved there with her two big shopping bags, where she promptly unfurled this large cloth with a picture of Jesus and a picture of Mary which she draped all over the back of the pew in front of her. Then she dug in her sacks and pulled out a big red square pillow held together with red tape and a big plastic gold toy crown she put on the pillow; she held the crown and pillow for the rest of the service, even when she went for ashes and for communion. She's apparently Catholic, since she seemed to know the service, but she spoke the congregational responses too slowly and too loudly to blend in with the rest of the people. I couldn't tell if she was mentally ill or just culturally different. She wore a dress made of bright red fabric with a gold metallic design on it, and a piece of the same fabric was wrapped around her blonde hair (I don't know if it was bleached or natural, but it looked odd on her dark skin) like a turban. She wore a white lace scarf on top of that and she had this thing that looked like a gold-glittered flat snowflake Christmas ornament safety pinned to the top of her head. White canvas shoes and white socks were on her feet.

The ushers just didn't know what to do with her. She didn't want to cooperate with their traffic control, and she didn't want to get her ashes or take communion from the station set up near our seats. Every time they tried to keep her from wandering off to other areas she threatened to scream. When it was time for the imposition of ashes, she managed to sneak past a woman usher and push her way through a full pew of people, carrying her pillow and crown all the time, and went to the center aisle where she cut in line to get her ashes from the cardinal. At communion, the ushers argued with her long enough that she acquiesced to going to the communion station by her seat, but instead of returning to her seat, she walked to the center aisle again and wanted communion from the cardinal, but he'd just finished and was returning to the altar, so she had to receive from the rector and she looked very disappointed about that.

Aren't cathedrals fun?

Here's a picture of the cardinal washing his hands just prior to consecrating the bread and wine.